Month: January 2005

In October 2004 I was in Stockholm and as I often do, I visited the bookshop Konstig in Kulturhuset. Upon entering the bookshop I heard someone asking about books on borders and boundaries (in English). The staff gave him some help but not a whole lot. I went up to him and told him that we have a group of students working on a project where the theme is “borders and boundaries”. Brendan (which turned to be his name) said that he is a photographer based in Stockholm and England. He got my email and after a week or so he emailed me back. That’s the start.

Now, about two months later, Brendan Austin will do an art installation here in HUMlab (as a part of the conference we run). He will display and talk about three art/photo projects. That’s just great!

Jeffrey Schnapp of the Stanford Humanities Lab has just given a presentation on A Portrait of Homo Velox: Speed, Technology and the Invention of Change. This was the title anyway, the actually content went from an outline of the phenomenology of the conceptualization of ‘Speed’ as being grounded in Baraque theories of wit and not, as is often presented in the industrial histography created around the heavy industries of the 19th century (railways, steam engines, automobiles).Continue reading “Jeffrey Schnapp at HUMlab”

As a fellow blog researcher, I found Lena’s talk very interesting. She is examining, among other things, the relationship between the reader and the author, as well as the reader and the site. It was interesting to note the pattern of interactivity between those who have a blog (who prefer the comment function)to those who do not have a blog (and prefer to interact through email). Why? Is it comfort with the medium? The feeling of ‘right’ to speak on a site? The latter was attributed as a reason to post or not to post. Many felt that they did not have the right to post to the blog when they did not have one of their own. More on this here

Just for your information: The picture in the previous entry is the last image of that plasma screen – alive that is. It broke down a minute later just like another plasma screen. Both worked this morning when the conference started but both imploded…

The university director, Inge-Bert Täljedal, opened the conference, Den Teknologiska Texturen with the thought (paraphrased) ‘The humanities has always been driven by technology. where would we be if no one had invented the pen or paper or oil colors. It is no surprise that this generation is taking the tools we have and pushing the proverbial envelope.’

This is the first (non-test) entry in HUMlab’s new web space. We have decided to make this blog our principal English (institutional) presence. One reason is because so many of us are bloggers and also because we want to bring in other people. Also, I think it makes sense to let the blog and our regular Swedish website be different (with different affordances) rather than just creating a mirror copy.

The format is still a bit experimental and it will probably take a couple of weeks to get things right. But this project is very exciting and I have very good hopes. We are planning to bring in guest bloggers (two weeks each) – an idea that I originally got from Jill Walker (this post). Hopefully Jill will guest blog here soon. Our first guest blogger is Bryan Alexander. This snippet from a recent Howard Rheingold article might give you a sense of Bryan.

I will never forget my first meeting with Bryan Alexander. I bet most people remember their first meeting with him. He’s friendly and cheerful, sports a big, black, civil-war general (or Biblical prophet) beard, and the light of some kind of fervor burns in his eyes. Ideas excite him and he’s not averse to passionate oratory.

Tomorrow the Technological Texture conference HUMlab organizes will open and we plan to showcase the blog. We might be able to recruit a few more guest bloggers then! Hopefully there will quite a lot of conference blogging on this site. I hope this will become a meeting place and an extension of HUMlab. I know we will spend time here. I hope you will too!